A trip to no-hopesville—a spiral into unhinged southern gothic terror.
A beautifully shot slice of sun-choked Texas sizzle that’s 110% certified grade-A impenetrable to criticism grizzle... and one of the most important films ever made—horror in its purist form. The kind of raw sweat-drenched monolithic genre art that extinguishes a symbolic flame of hope inside of you, leaving but an empty husk of a viewer... forever changed.
The ultimate horror film.
Crazy original and extremely intense, Anguish feels like the perfect mix of Uzimaki and Demons—and personally that’s so up my alley it isn’t even funny.
Spirals, eyes, birds behind cabinets, Zelda Rubinstein, movies theaters, and Michael Lerner giving one a twisted performance for the ages, there’s a very specific vibe and feeling I get when I watch this movie and only this movie—there’s parts of this that actually make me squirm... specifically Michael Lerner and the hyper a realistic murder set-piece…
Revels in the dingy Grand Guignol set pieces with more gore, more traps, and more melodrama while opting for up close in your face Ludivico technique visuals brain surgery of bodies contorting, protruding bones, pig vats, and crunchy severed flesh. Love the emotional beats between Amanda and John Kramer, and the grotesque traps on display... the shotgun collar, the Angel trap, the freezer, the rack, the pig vat, and Jeff’s final test—a true example of the malignant nihilism flowing throughout…
Bousman’s grainy sylistic filth jam really gets the ball rolling for the series—injecting it with even more frantic mayhem and setting the template for his next few franchise offerings which also happen to be my favorite meat in the Saw sandwich.
One time back in the day my mother walked in on my watching this during the hypodermic needle pit scene and that’s what she thinks every horror movie is like now lol.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and I’ll start of by saying my immediate reaction walking out of the theater was that I liked it, despite definitly having some issues... so I went home and let it simmer for a while...
The first act didn’t jive with me, but once Michael obtained the mask, or for that matter anytime the Shape was on screen I thought it was dynamite, exactly how I’d want to see The Shape shift through houses…
